Red Cedar

Well, well. My hard drive is officially dead and a friend just sent me a link to this story that probably explains what happened. This does give me some small comfort. Like, there is a reason the drive just crapped out, it’s not because the universe hates me or because people are doing bad voodoo in my direction. Fortunately I have fairly extensive backups (with the exception of a few recent items and some itunes downloads) – though I may have lost all my email archives again (which I consider lucky, I feel guilty about purging it but at the same time I don’t want to keep it).

The worst part of course is reinstalling software and re-setting everything – but seeing as there is nothing I can do about it, I’m taking this particular hardware failure in stride. (Oh so zen). Will be looking for a copy of Adobe CS again, if anyone can help me in that area.

Somewhere in the Philipenes, inmates at a federal correctional facility are doing highly choreographed dance routines to pass the time. Not only that but these routines are then being posted on You-Tube. Really – if you like this one, then check out their Thriller routine with 1500 inmates.

Holy weirdness Batman.

I am struggling with some sort of mysterious bacterial infection that seems to be holding onto my insides despite the fact I am on my second round of antibiotics as of yesterday. I suspect that I perhaps had two different infections and only one has been treated properly, so I’ve got another appointment tomorrow to get things checked out. It’s making me tired and a bit grumpy, but not tired or grumpy enough to stay home from work. So I’m at my desk, have a meeting to speak at over lunch time and I’m hoping to drop my computer off at MacStation afterwards. Really I just want to curl up and feel sorry for myself.

And yes, I know people. It’s because I drive myself too hard. I don’t need the lecture. (Nor do I believe I would be sick less often if I did less. Really, it’s remarkable how rarely I get ill.)

The thing I hate most about being sick is how utterly destroyed my confidence is by it. Like I’m so defective because of this momentary health lapse that no one will want to listen to me speak, date me, or really come near me (leper!). Ridiculous, yes, but I have to make a real effort not to succumb to those beliefs when I’m not feeling well. Probably has to do with the fact so much of my self-worth is based on what I can *do*, and if I’m not well I’m not doing as much as I *should* be.

Oh. *Whine*.

Really it’s not that bad, I’m just sluggish and overwhelmed by the approaching holidays. This weekend is the one for getting gifts and also making plans for my party next Friday in terms of food and supplies. I’m also planning on going to Emily’s (MCEhawk) on Saturday night for her party, but I’m wondering if anyone is interested in going the Leaky Heaven event at the Russian hall partway through the night as well (short performances for very short attention spans). If you are, let me know because I think it might be a fun thing to go off to for a bit and it’s just down in Strathcona.

I had a post half-written yesterday when my hard drive started acting up. Acting up in such a way that I hit the reset button thinking that it was just some processor error that would correct itself upon reboot. Instead, I was faced with the white-screen-o-death (on PCs it’s the blue screen, but I use a Mac at home) and no amount of futzing with the disk utility would bring my hard drive back online. So yeah. Two months old and the hard drive has taken itself out – you would think I was abusing the poor thing!

Fortunately I hadn’t written anything that scintillating, so it was no big loss when the drive sputtered. Thank heavens for backups of almost everything else!

Some of you know that I’ve been kicking around the idea of some overseas travel for awhile… thinking that once I’ve completed my work contract and my bargaining commitment it will probably be time for a long holiday as far away from my cube as possible. Originally it was going to be the Camino de Santiago, an 800 km trek from France to Spain but more recently I’ve fielded a couple of invitations that have made me think more seriously about travel to the Middle East. Having flirted with this idea previously, I started doing a little research and well… the more I’ve read the more I want to go.

Istanbul to Cairo overland in March/April 2009 through Syria and Jordan. Sound like fun? Apparently you can take the train for most of it, and then ferry from Jordan to Egypt across the Red Sea. I’m not kidding people. This is the trip I want to take… and I’ve promised myself that the day we ink our new agreement (next fall sometime probably) is the day I buy a plane ticket somewhere.

I feel pretty lucky in that I have some friends living in the region, and some other contacts I’m going to try and milk for places to stay and travel advice – though I expect I will be mostly going it alone. I’m open to people who want to join me in parts – so if there is one of these places you’ve always wanted to travel to keep an eye here for my itinerary and let me know. I’m not looking for anyone to join me for the whole 7 weeks. As much as I fear being lonely, I prefer to do a lot of my traveling alone – hooking up with people along the way for bits of the journey.

The next year is going to be a hard go between work and the union – and this might just provide the light at the end of the tunnel to look on to. I am satisfied with my life in so many ways, but a little restless for a new adventure… nothing too dangerous, but nothing staid either. Any advice? Please feel free to send it my way 🙂

I just realized that despite the fact I work in a technology field, am a founder of a technology collective and have integrated many gadgets into my creative life – I never, ever blog about technology. I talk about it, indeed – and can trade geek jokes like the best of them – but the truth is that I don’t think about it too much unless I’m buying new gear. And I don’t get all that excited when I do. It’s just all the more software/hardware to be integrated into the routine.

A friend recently laughed at me because of my overly-large “purse” – an accessory item I never had a need for until I started wanting both my laptop and digital camera with me on a semi-regular basis. Fortunately my current bag also has room for my new Zoom device, so I can easy pack all my encased technology into one very stylish bag rather than some ratty backpack. Yup. For someone who never talks about technology, I am awfully obsessed with having the right tech at my disposal at the right time. I suppose that’s what I mean about integrated, when you have what you need and know what to use it requires less thought than access and understanding of the tools.

Two brand new tools in my life are Google Analytics and my new Zoom media device, both of which I’m delighted with and exploring for the first time.

Google Analytics came into my life a few months ago when a co-worker in Ottawa turned me onto its power for recording website statistics and mapping them in fancy charts and graphs. I finally got around to installing it on this blog a few days ago and I am just as impressed to see it in operation as I was at the demonstration. Much more accurate than the statistics software I was using before (which picked up all manner of robots and rss feeds), I am coming to realize that my actual site visits per day are much lower than I had been previously recording. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a respectable audience – but it is about a quarter of what had been recorded previously. By far the coolest feature is the map function which allows you to see the countries and cities from which people are surfing your site via a map overview. (Yes, Fhar, I even can see that I have one reader all the way over in Cairo). There is also a function for site overlay which brings up your site and shows the frequency with which your links out are clicked.

I suppose my one complaint is that because it doesn’t seem to be picking up on the rss feeds I have no way of knowing how many people read my blog offsite through an rss-aggregator. Then again it may be just that I haven’t had this running for enough days to get a complete picture of all readership either. I’m looking forward to having a month of data logged so I can get a real sense of how this blog is doing in terms of visitors. Then the question is – do I care if my readership is only 50 per day? Does it need to be more to be successful? How do you measure success when there is no profit being made anyhow? I suppose that’s fodder for another post in the future.

Which brings me to the second new toy – the Zoom H2 media device pictured above – which I purchased expressly to produce new and different content for this blog and other web forums. Again, I just received this two days ago and have had no time to really play with it – but am so far very pleased with what I have seen of it. For a $200 field recorder this comes loaded with accessories and recording options. Four microphones built-in front and back, easy to use interface, and from what I can tell so far – excellent recording quality even with the built-in mikes. It records in various WAV and MP3 qualities depending on how much room you’ve got on the SD card, and though I haven’t tried uploading any sound to my computer yet, I understand the process is quite seamless. The whole device is about the size of a pack of cards which makes it easy to tuck into the media bag or pocket on the go.

The last time I did any recording outside of a studio was about ten years ago in university where our field recorders were high-end Sony cassette decks that cost about $600 apiece with the expensive mike we used for ambient and interview recordings. (And yes, we transferred all our recordings onto reel-to-reel tape and did our editing with razorblade and patch tape). Given that it’s been such a long time I have to say that I am absolutely blown away by the ease of recording and editing with a digital device. I really did love sound design and I think learning manual editing methods were good for me, but I’m not at a point in my life where I have that kind of time. The Zoom device is a pretty easy capture and transfer device. I’m not sure how it compares with the minidisk recorders but at less than half the price I don’t really care either. (And given the rave reviews for this device I’m sure it will do everything I need for multimedia podcasting).

Anyone of you care to be interviewed? I’m going to start storyboarding some posts soon – but I might just go with a few simple podcast recordings to increase my own comfort with the device. I’ll let you all know how it goes – or you can tune in to hear all about it when I get the time to play more. Because that’s what the new tech is really about… playtime.